Fetus or Parasite?

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/woman_overjoyed_by_giant_uterine

This (rather hilarious) article is a critique of the trend toward individualizing fetuses and, through satire and humor, puts a focus back on the woman's pregnant body.  This is a dangerous thing to do because so much work of the Women's Health Movement was to remove the medical gaze from women's bodies.  In fact, I would not go so far as to call this article a feminist critique, there are quite a number of problematic comments, but it takes a useful stance for a feminist critique of the effects of looking at fetuses as autonomous beings, as beings somehow separate from the bodies within which they reside.  Treichler et. al. arue that "in acknowledging what is seen, and newly seen, we need to be equally vigilant about what is not seen, or no longer seen" (3).  I am not arguing for a simple shift of the gaze, but rather that the significance of what is (not) being spoken about has ramifications beyond linguistics.  

The Onion article says, "Immediately following a physician's examination for her menstrual cessation, 37-year-old events planner Janice Crowley told reporters Tuesday that she is "ecstatic" with her diagnosis of a rapidly growing intrauterine parasite" ("Woman Overjoyed by Giant Uterine Parasite").  By calling what the reader can assume to be a fetus a "parasite" the article emphasizes the fact that the creature cannot live outside of the woman's body.  The fetus is dependent on the mother for survival and can possibly pose a risk to the mother's health.  The parasite is called a " golf ball-sized, nutrient-sapping organism" ("Woman Overjoyed...").  Within this framework, the focus of health is the woman, not the fetus.  

There are implications for reproductive freedoms by positing a fetus as an autonomous being, which is often done in discourse and imagery around abortion rights.  "The speech that would render women speechless must be interrupted and this entails...interrupting "the visual discourse of fetal autonomy"--reembodying the disembodied fetal form or resituating the gestating fetus in a uterus and the uterus in a body, thereby re-membering what is otherwise dis-membered" (Hartouni 213).  This article does just that.  The focus is on how the fetus affects the body and health of the mother, situating it within her body, dependent upon her body.

works cited: Hartouni, Valerie. "Fetal Exposures: Abortion Politics and Optics of Allusion." The Visible Woman: Imaging Technologies, Gender, and Science. Ed. Paula A. Treichler, Lisa Cartwright, and Constance Penley.  New York: New York University Press, 1998. 198-216.

Treichler, Paula, Lisa Cartwright, and Constance Penley. "Introduction: Paradoxes of Visibility." The Visible Woman: Imagiing Technologies, Gender, and Science. Ed. Paula A. Treichler, Lisa Cartwright, and Constance Penley. New York: New York University Press, 1998. 1-17. 

"Woman Overjoyed by Giant Uterine Parasite."  The Onion. 27 August 2007. 6 March 2008 http://www.theonion.com/content/news/woman_overjoyed_by_giant_uterine.

bump watch?!

http://omg.yahoo.com/baby-bumps/hot-topics/21

I know I'm not always up-to-date on pop culture, but bump watch!? The watching is not just about "the bump" either. There's also reporting on the medical side of things- like vaginal vs. cesarean section births, doctor check-ups, leaked ultra-sound photos, etc. Well, I made up the idea of ultra-sound paparazzi, but one could imagine...

Ricki Lake and False Binaries

Check out this documentary: http://www.thebusinessofbeingborn.com/

This film, produced by Ricki Lake, is an example of some contemporary political work being done around the medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth. The film aims to disprove many culturally popular beliefs in the U.S. about the safety of giving birth in hospitals with doctors versus having a more "natural" birth with a midwife. Its main argument seems to be a call to de-medicalize pregnancy and birthing.

One of the main issues at hand is the notion of choice. In this regard, pregnancy and birthing discourse is closely tied to discourse around abortion rights. The idea of making a choice based on informed consent and personal desires is often juxtaposed to the processes of normalization that are continually acting upon us. This juxtaposition creates a false binary and leads political arguments in directions where differing opinions will inevitably never find common ground. Instead it is useful to think about personal choice and processes of normalization as both constantly at work. Then, the work to be done (aided through the theoretical work of Judith Butler) is to expand the realm of the norms to provide broader accepted opportunities to exert informed personal choices. The work that this documentary does is to present birthing with a midwife as a viable popular option for women to choose. It's downfall is in demonizing the majority of obstetricians and births that occur in hospitals which may alienate some women's "desires" and experiences and thus make them closed-off to the films political project.

It’s All Connected- In the Fertility Clinic

The article, “Biomedicalization: Technoscientific Transformations of Health, Illness, and U.S. Biomedicine” by Adele Clarke, et. al. describes the elements of biomedicalization occurring in contemporary United Statesian medicine. A key focus of the differences between medicalization and biomedicalization is on a shift from “control over” bodies and practices to “transformations of” them. The authors of this article coin the term “ Biomedical TechnoService Complex, Inc.” as a way to situate biomedicalization both politico-economically and socioculturally, with a focus on the proliferation of technoscientific innovations into the medical realm (162).

An obvious site of the entrance of technology and the furthering of the medical gaze into pregnancy and childbirth is in the Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) clinic. Charis Thompson’s book, Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technologies, looks to disprove the nature-versus-culture duality and to show how the social constitutes our understanding of the natural by empirically doing work inside a fertility clinic. If the “Biomedical TechnoService Complex, Inc.” shows how biomedicalization has entered politics, economics, society, and culture, the fertility clinic is a place where one can see intersections and a co-constitutive nature of all of these at work.

In terms of the (bio)medicalization of pregnancy and birthing, Thompson’s work helps us to realize the materiality of constructions. As is mentioned in the previous posting, obstetricians socially constructed a new framework for understanding pregnancy and childbirth. This does not mean that this new construction did not lead to a very real reality. Thompson says, “what I have found is that the metaphor of construction leads people not to discount reality but to attribute reality and causal power to many ontologically different kinds of things and to many different kinds of agents” (33). This means that our understandings of women’s bodies and the biological processes of pregnancy and birthing are made from an interplay of constructed beliefs about nature and culture yet are nevertheless grounded in reality.

works cited:
Clarke, Adele et al. "Biomedicalization: Technoscientific Transformation of Health, Illness and U.S. Biomedicine." American Sociological Review. 68:2, 2003. 161-194.

Thompson, Charis. Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technologies. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005.

Introduction to the "Disease"

The notion of pregnancy and childbirth as diseases begins with medicalization. Catherine Riessman’s article, “Women and Medicalization: A New Perspective,” documents a history of the medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth, geographically focused in the United States.

Prior to the entrance of obstetricians into the realm of pregnancy and childbirth midwives attended to births. These were women who, “assisted by a network of female relatives and friends, provided emotional support and practical assistance to the pregnant woman both during the actual birth and in the weeks that followed” (Riessman 51). Beginning in the early 20th century the field of obstetrics arose as an option for monitoring pregnancy and birthing. “Obstetricians were successful in persuading both their physician colleagues and the general public of the “fallacy of normal pregnancy,” and therefore of the need for a “science” of obstetrical practice” (51). This move from midwives to obstetricians was a process intertwined with race, class, and gender.

The work to demonize midwives was a racial and class project, in that “obstetricians were from the dominant class, whereas midwives were mostly immigrant and Black women” (51). Note that Riessman herself doesn’t have a clear notion of whether to mention race or class—she conveniently relates the obstetricians with a higher class (while not mentioning Whiteness) and the midwives with race and ethnicity (while not mentioning poverty). Riessman’s article continues to lack in a radically critical raced or classed analysis of the history of the medicalization of pregnancy and birthing, but her conflation of different types of subjugated positionalities shows how complicatedly embedded medicalization is in all arenas of life.

works cited: Riessman, Catherine Kohler. "Women and Medicalization: A New Perspective." Politics of Women's Bodies. Ed. Rose Weitz. Oxford University Press, 2003. 46-63.

Personal Motivations

Although there is plenty written on the (bio)medicalization of pregnancy and birthing, and I would have liked to choose a topic on which less is written, I have chosen this topic for my “disease” journal because of personal interests. I have a plan of one day becoming a midwife and have already begun training to be a post-partum doula. More recently, a good friend of mine nearly died in the hospital after giving birth by cesarean section to a healthy little baby. The majority of women in my life over 30 are either pregnant or have just given birth. I have a personal investment in understanding these processes of biomedicalization better for both my close friends and my future career.